To­ba­go so­ca artiste An­tho­ny “Jr Ba­na” Bac­chus was bond­ed in the sum of $20,000 to keep the peace and be of good be­hav­iour for two years when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­drani Ce­de­no at the Scar­bor­ough Mag­is­trates’ Court on Mon­day.

He was charged for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na.

The court heard that po­lice of­fi­cers from the Di­vi­sion­al Task Force ex­e­cut­ed a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion search war­rant at a wood­en shack at De Coteaux Trace, Zion Hill, Belle Gar­den, where Bac­chus, 30, re­sides on May 17 around 4.45 am.

They found the mar­i­jua­na con­cealed in three trans­par­ent plas­tic bags in a fridge. The drug weighed 84 grammes and had a street val­ue of $3,400, ap­prox­i­mate­ly three times the le­gal amount. Bac­chus plead­ed guilty to the crime.

The Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Act, which came in­to ef­fect in De­cem­ber last year, per­mits each adult to have a max­i­mum of 30 grammes of mar­i­jua­na in their pos­ses­sion and four mar­i­jua­na plants on their premis­es.

Bac­chus was the run­ner-up in the 2020 To­ba­go So­ca Monarch fi­nals and a semi­fi­nal­ist in the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch with his 2020 song Groovy. It was on­ly two weeks ago that Bac­chus re­leased a video for the song on YouTube.

Bac­chus was al­so a for­mer Air­port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer but was fired from his job ear­ly this year.